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How-To Geek

Many companies want to sell you “memory optimizers,” often as part of “PC optimization” programs. These programs are worse than useless — not only will they not speed up your computer, they’ll slow it down.

Such programs take advantage of inexperienced users, making false promises about boosting performance. In reality, your computer knows how to manage RAM on its own. It will use RAM to increase your computer’s performance — there’s no point in having RAM sit empty.

Is Your Computer’s RAM Filling Up? That’s Good!

Memory optimizers are based on a misunderstanding. You may look at your computer’s RAM and see it filling up — for example, you may have 4 GB of RAM and see that 3 GB is full with only 1 GB to spare. That can be surprising to some people — look how bloated modern versions of Windows are! How are you ever going to run additional programs with so little memory available?

In reality, modern operating systems are pretty good at managing memory on their own. That 3 GB of used RAM doesn’t necessarily indicate waste. Instead, your computer uses your RAM to cache data for faster access. Whether it’s copies of web pages you had open in your browser, applications you previously opened, or any other type of data you might need again soon, your computer hangs onto it in its RAM. When you need the data again, your computer doesn’t have to hit your hard drive — it can just load the files from RAM.

Crucially, there’s no point in having RAM empty. Even if your RAM is completely full and your computer needs more of it to run an application, your computer can instantly discard the cached data from your RAM and use that space for the application. There’s no point in having RAM sit empty — if it’s empty, it’s being wasted. If it’s full, there’s a good chance it can help speed up program loading times and anything else that would use your computer’s hard drive.

Notice that very little RAM is actually “free” in the screenshot below. The RAM is being used as a cache, but it’s still marked as available for any program that needs to use it.

In the past, full RAM did indicate a problem. If you were running Windows Vista on a computer with half a gig of RAM, you could feel the computer constantly slowing down — it had to constantly read and write to the hard drive, using the hard drive’s page file as an inefficient replacement for RAM. However, modern computers generally have enough RAM for most users. Even low-end computers generally ship with 4GB of RAM, which should be more than enough unless you’re doing intensive gaming, running multiple virtual machines, or editing videos.

Even if RAM was a problem for you, there’s no reason to use a memory optimizer. Memory optimizers are snake oil that are useless at best and harmful at worst.

How Memory Optimizers Work

When you use a memory optimizer, you’ll see your computer’s RAM usage go down. This may seem like an easy win — you’ve decreased RAM usage just be pressing a button, after all. But it’s not that simple.

They quickly allocate a large amount of memory to themselves, forcing Windows to discard cached data and write application data to the page file. They then deallocate the memory, leaving it empty.

Both of these tricks will indeed free up RAM, making it empty. However, all this does is slow things down — now the applications you use will have to get the data they need from the page file, reading from the hard drive and taking longer to work. Any memory being used for cache may be discarded, so Windows will have to get the data it needs from the hard drive.

In other words, these programs free up fast memory by forcing data you need onto slower memory, where it will have to be moved back to fast memory again. This makes no sense! All it accomplishes is selling you another system optimization program you don’t need.

If Windows needs RAM, it will push data to the page file or discard cached data, anyway. This all happens automatically when it needs to — there’s no point in slowing things down by forcing it to happen before it’s necessary.

Like PC cleaning apps, memory optimizers are a scam. They appear to be doing something positive to people who don’t understand how memory management works, but they’re actually doing something harmful.

How to Actually “Optimize” Your Memory

If you do want to have more available RAM, skip the memory optimizer. Instead, try to get rid of running applications you don’t need — purge unnecessary programs from your system tray, disable useless startup programs, and so on.

what about Cleanmem? they say that it's not a snake oilCleanMem keeps memory use in check on the system without the memory being pushed to the page file. This in turn keeps the system running smoother.

Well to be honest windows uses a plan it thinks is best in most scenarios. Your mileage may vary. Dramatically. And if you know what you are doing then you can alter things so that windows default settings don't get in the way too much. However you'd probably be better off moving to Linux where you have much more open standards so you can fine tune things more easily.

Partial truths here. The cache can hold junk information and not information that you will use. You open the taskmanager and kill apps. The computer is still slow. A reboot is needed and after the reboot the computer is snappy again (this applies even to optimized computers with few startup programs.) again.... I repeat this happens even if you try killing apps from the taskmanager. This happens to my android phone as well... The ram boosters are annoying... But the claim that the os can manage ram without a hitch is equally annoying if not more so, and i keep reading that everywhere. Its wrong. A reboot seems to fix things... If the OS was so great in managing memory a reboot would never be needed. And yes there are some people that never reboot and they will claim that their pc's are running fine. Well... That means you are nit stressing the computer enough with multiple programs.

It should be noted that memboosters can be useful. See there are some applications out there that shall we say, aren't very responsoible with clean up I.e they do not release the memory after they've been closed. This is usually sloppy programming.

This was actually a problem in the earlier days but now, windows has gotten smarter about such things and programmers have gotten better. The best way to keep your memory humming. CHeck Task manager and take note occasionally which apps are using memory. Maybe replace those apps.

It is no secret that Firefox can consume quite a bit of system memory during normal usage. While the number of tabs you have open and the installed add-ons certainly contribute, even a conservatively used out of the box installation can report quite a bit of memory usage.

The computer is still slow. A reboot is needed and after the reboot the computer is snappy again

Wait a second. I restart my laptop once a month (for Windows updates), and when I restart, open Chrome and load up the 9348082 tabs I had open before restarting, I feel absolutely no performance difference at all.

A previous poster mentioned cleanmem. I have found this free utility useful especially on systems with limited resources. The author does not claim it will speed up your system or magically increase free/usable memory. Objective is to reduce the frequency of writes to the system page file using native Windows APIs. See link below for further discussion.

I'm afraid I have to agree with BigTech here, memory cleaners can be useful for those running programs that don't want to release memory when shut down. It would be nice if Task manager would force that release, but all it's doing (this from past experience, "Your Mileage May Vary") is shutting down the program, not cleaning up after it. On the other hand, if you don't use any programs like NSDCars must not, then you don't have a need for them, and they serve no purpose.

These programs are worse than useless — not only will they not speed up your computer, they’ll slow it down.

I totally disagree with this statement.I run a Dell Dimension E521 with 3GB ram , originally came with Vista 32bit, and it kept stalling every few minutes to free up ram. After I installed Mz Ram Booster my PC ran as smooth as silk.I still use MZ Ram Booster now that I have Win 7 installed and as I said before, my PC runs like a dream, NO stalling to recover ram either.

Well, Hermit. I, too, have a Dimension E321, but with XP & 4GB of RAM. AND, I also use Mz Ram Booster but prefer FreeMem Professional.

The big mistake this article makes is that it totally ignores how many programs WILL NOT CLEAR THE VIRTUAL RAM CACHE OR THE PHYSICAL RAM CACHE WHEN THEY GET FILLED UP WHILE RUNNING ONE OR MORE PROGRAMS.

Often, the programs' DLLs and add-ons get left behind, too, instead of being removed with the programs' executables. How many times has your Firefox browser crashed b/c of how Mozilla uses those screwed-up plugin-containers to handle all instances of Flash and ShockWave graphics?

Flash scripts and Javascripts keep filling up and over the plugin-containers provided for them. When Firefox is heading towards a crash, it will first keep stopping and asking, "Do you want to stop the script or let it continue?" Sometimes stopping the script will work and at other times, letting the script continue will work. But, a crash is inevitable unless you start clearing out the cache and closing off tabs. The add-ons that give you manual control over scripts like Flash, Javascript, and Java, and the ads that use them, is another way to keep the cup from running over.

But, the right thing to do is to periodically clean out the memory - in the local cache; in the roaming cache; in the Virtual Ram, and in the Physical Ram.

What you do not want to do is run out of disk space when Microsloth;s memory management monster STEALS it from your C: DRIVE even if you specified another drive to hold the virtual RAM.

Clearing out Firefox's cache, the virtual memory cache, and the hardware RAM will absolutely ditch these anchors and speed up your programs while keeping the Mozilla Monster from "flashing" the Microsoft Reporting Tool.

Microsloth's memory management algorithms will go and grab MORE disk space when MORE virtual RAM is needed, but it won't release it when it doesn't really need it.

Every tweaking site recommends manually setting the cache size to a fixed maximum rather than letting memory management move it in between the alleged minimum of aroud 30MB to its alleged maximum of around 3,000MB

Step 1 - Uninstall bad Ram optimisations apps. (the only ones that were worth a damn were the ones that helped you switch between high and low mem in DOS and optimised your autoexec.bat etc. "Man I now gots me 630K!")

I disagree. I used Cleanmem on a XP laptop (1 GB) and it DID speed up my system. Cleanmem uses the API EmptyWorkingSet. Like the author of Cleanmem has said, it didn't make a difference of night & day but it did speed up that system. I certainly could see the difference.

So, the assumption that a memory optimizer using the API EmptyWorkingSet is slowing down one's system is sheer nonsense.

Another way Cleanmem can help to optimize memory usage is that it can collapse the filecache. I have seen the filecache grow to truly GIANT sizes (i.e. GBs). It happens when I use one backup program. Thanks to Cleanmem I can let the filecache collapse. The alternative would have been restarting my system.

if you can increase your memory ram, increase them; if not, these memory optimizers will work wonders for you. I run imacros round the clock with netbook having max 2GB memory; these critters worked. I used netbook for data acquisition as it consumed only 38 watts compared to more than 150 watts for desktops.